


Honorable Duty

by Luz



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Royalty, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 05:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7877503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luz/pseuds/Luz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam is a member of the royal guard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honorable Duty

The bell tower rang out midnight faintly as Adam Parrish trudged up the stone staircase that lead to the prince’s quarters. He would be standing watch outside a chamber door for six hours while the heir to the throne of Henrietta slept inside. He couldn’t have been less excited.

As he mounted the final few stairs, the guard from the evening shift came into view. He was slight, blond, only a few years older than Adam, and currently sitting on the floor against the chamber door, sleeping. Both sitting and sleeping were strictly forbidden activities, but the standards that Adam strove to adhere to weren't always taken as seriously by some members of the guard.

“Czerny,” Adam said sharply. The other guard’s hand flew to the hilt of his sword as he fumbled awake.

“What! Oh, it’s just you. Good evening.” 

“What if I had been Lynch? He would have tossed you out a window,” Adam said reproachfully. The captain of the guard, Ronan Lynch, was famously intolerant of carelessness among his charges. 

Noah scoffed quietly. “You sneak. Lynch _thunders_. And he never comes up here.”

Adam frowned. This was the fourth time in a week he had been assigned to guard the prince’s quarters, and each night Lynch had appeared at some point to talk to him. Talking wasn't really the right word for it, since their conversations always began with the captain finding something to criticize about Adam's performance - his boots weren't laced properly, his stance wasn't straight enough, there was dirt under his fingernails. He had no idea why he was being checked on regularly while someone like Noah was not. The thought annoyed him immensely.

“I’m leaving,” Noah said. “I need more sleep.” 

“Good night,” Adam said dully. “If you never see me again it’ll be because I died of boredom.”

Noah’s chuckle echoed up from the winding staircase even after he had already disappeared down it. Adam took his spot in front of the chamber door and resigned himself to a long night.

* * *

 

Two o’clock pealed faintly from the courtyard and Lynch still hadn't shown. Some nights he would stay talking with Adam for close to an hour, long after his boots had been re-laced and his stance corrected. Mostly he complained: about the king’s war advisor, who happened to be his older brother; about the king himself; about the lazy guards he was left in charge of. It wasn't the most interesting stuff to listen to, but Adam found himself grateful for anything that broke the monotony of a night shift inside the castle. Trapped within the stone walls, he felt sure he would go mad from boredom. He longed for the relative diversion of an outdoor shift in the stables or along the gate. The castle was surrounded by woodlands, and he often saw deer and owls and other wild things. Once he had even glimpsed a group of silvery dryads weaving between the oak trees, dancing nude and beckoning.

No sound broke the impenetrable silence of the stone walls around Adam’s post, though if he cocked his hearing ear toward the door he sometimes heard an occasional soft snore. He wondered if Lynch had finally grown bored of walking all the way up to the fourth floor of the castle to spew complaints. If he leaned against the wall he could take some weight off of his aching feet, and if he relaxed his eyelids they wouldn’t sting as much…

He jerked awake the moment his eyes closed completely. _He would not fall asleep._ Not while he was being trusted with one of the more important tasks a guard could be given, and not when Lynch could be right around the corner. 

He was considering kicking the wall with his toe so the pain would keep him awake when a strange sound came from behind the chamber door. It sounded like a yelp of pain, and Adam’s sleepiness fled in an instant. The sound came again. Adam felt his heartbeat pick up. He had been trained how to respond to threats approaching from the staircase, not from _within_ the prince’s quarters. He pounded on the door frantically. It was unlocked as a rule, but he was under strict instruction never to open it. “Your majesty!” he shouted. No answer. What if an intruder had somehow gained access through a window? The thought made Adam’s stomach turn and resolved him to fling the door open.

Prince Richard Gansey III was sitting up straight in his canopied bed, clutching the sheets to his nightshirt. His shoulders heaved rapidly and his eyes looked wild with fear. _A nightmare_ , Adam realized. _Nothing more._

“I’m sorry, your majesty,” Adam said, bowing his head in deference. His face burned with shame. “I thought…perhaps you were in danger.”

“It’s all right,” the prince said after half a minute’s silence. “Thank you for checking on me.” His voice was tight and strained and far from the gleaming tone that Adam was used to hearing. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He wore a simple linen nightshirt not unlike the one that hung in Adam’s quarters and he looked small and alone in the center of the tremendous bed. Adam had seen the prince dozens of times before around the castle, but he was usually clad in velvet and ermine and surrounded by other people - including sometimes Lynch, who would glare at Adam and bark an order if he thought he was staring too much.

Adam had never even thought about talking to Richard Gansey.

“Do…do you need anything?” Adam asked lamely.

Gansey looked over at him, eyes calculating beneath the disarray of his expression. For a moment Adam thought he would be chastised. 

“Come here,” the prince said instead. “Come sit on the bed.”

Adam gaped, not believing what he had heard.

“Shall I put it to you as it as an order instead?”

“No, sir,” Adam said hurriedly. “Sorry.”

“You can remove your sword,” Gansey said. His eyes had fallen closed again. Adam did as he was told and sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. He kept his hands in his lap because he wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch the silken covers.

The prince swept aside his blankets impatiently and crawled over to Adam, who was staring in outright bewilderment. Then he took Adam’s wrists in his hands, pushed them to the other side of his legs, laid down, and placed his head directly in Adam’s lap.

Shocked, Adam remained wordless. He didn’t know what he would possibly ask to clarify the situation. Maybe this was a normal part of being a guard that no one had bothered to tell him. Maybe this was a tremendous joke thought up by a bored prince. Maybe Lynch was in on it too. 

If it was a joke, though, it was a strange one and the prince was a better actor than Adam would have surmised.

A moment later the tense silence was broken with another request. “Would you touch my hair?” Gansey asked. “Only if you wouldn’t mind.”

Adam swallowed, his mind in a scramble. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, but as he looked down at the vulnerable face in his lap he found it strangely easy to move his hand wordlessly to the prince’s head. _It was bad not to recognize an order vocally_ , he thought fleetingly, but as soon as his fingers met Gansey’s hair he sighed out contentedly and Adam pushed his set of standards to the back of his mind.

He sat there for several minutes, stroking through the hair at the prince’s temples. If he looked away he could imagine he was touching a horse’s mane, though softer. Adam could sense Gansey’s breathing growing steadier, and his head grew slowly heavier in his lap as his muscles relaxed.

“I apologize for being so demanding,” the prince said eventually. His voice was softer. “I know you weren’t expecting this. It’s how my childhood nurse would comfort me after a bad dream. I usually don’t have them anymore. I had forgotten how awful they were.” He paused. “It’s Adam, right?”

“Yes, sir. Adam Parrish.”

The prince smiled faintly. “How long have you been in my service, Adam Parrish?”

“Nearly three years. Since I was sixteen.”

“So you want to become a knight one day?”

“No, sir.”

“What, then?”

“I intend to open an apothecary. I’ve been learning what I can on my own.”

Gansey cracked an eye at this. “But you will need to apprentice.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So what is a young intellectual like yourself doing in the king’s guard?”

“I wouldn’t earn any money apprenticing,” Adam said after a pause. “And I need to send something each month to my mother, so she can keep her lodging.” He omitted that in fact he sent _all_ of his guard’s wages to his adoptive mother and the other orphaned street children she cared for. Adam doubted he would still be alive if it weren’t for Persephone taking him in eight years ago when his own father had told Adam he would ruin his other ear if he bothered coming back home again. Being the eldest of the children, he had wanted to find the best job he could to provide his new family the regular income they desperately needed. Joining the guard had been the most lucrative option, even though he’d found the prospect distasteful. _Only for a year more,_ he reminded himself. _Then the twins will be old enough to find work, and I can begin studying in earnest._

“Admirable,” Gansey murmured. Both his eyes were open now. “Noble of you.”

Adam felt a twinge of annoyance at this - he considered what he did _surviving_ , not being noble. But he could tell that the words had been meant as a compliment. Gansey shut his eyes again.

“Thank you,” he said. “You helped.”

“It’s my honor, your majesty," Adam said.

The prince made a small noise. "You don't have to call me that. Just Gansey will do." His voice was murky and soft now.

Adam nodded numbly. So many boundaries that he had regarded as impassable had disappeared over the past few minutes that he was hardly surprised any more. His mind felt blank. Gansey was completely still in his lap and his breaths were beginning to even out in a way that foretold sleep. Adam cleared his throat.

"Are you ready to go back to sleep, sir? Er - Gansey?"

The prince laughed softly. "Yes." He moved off of Adam's lap, brushing his hands over the front of his nightshirt to smooth it. He settled back at the head of the bed and regarded Adam. "Would you mind staying inside for the rest of the night? You can sit there," he said, nodding at the velvet chair against the closest wall. "You can even sleep if you want. I trust the captain of the guard will survive one night without your company."

Adam flushed. He hadn't known anyone had been able to hear their conversations. "I must apologize-" he started, but Gansey waved him off with a lazy hand.

"Don't worry. Anyone who can bear to consort with Ronan for as long as you do has more than proven himself as a capable member of the guard. Besides, I think you put him in a better mood. Slightly fewer tantrums lately.”

Adam flushed again, and busied himself with refastening his belt and scabbard. By the time he had taken his seat in the straight backed chair, Gansey appeared to have fallen asleep again. Adam listened to his breathing for the rest of the night and let himself out quietly just before the break of dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> me: [realizes how many of my fics/wips involve gansey being comforted until he can fall asleep] shitdamn I might be uhhh projecting here
> 
> anyway ty for reading!! I love comments...


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